Climate Craziness of the Week: Hurricane Harvey used as election tool

The hubub in the MSM and the Alt-Left is that they are hoping that they’ll be able to pin “ineffective response” on President Trump like they did for President Bush and the messed of response by FEMA to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Washington Post expects it will cost him votes. of course, we all know how effective WaPo was during the 2016 presidential election at vote prediction.

The difference however, is that Texans, and Houstonians, tend to be more self-sufficient than the people in New Orleans. Cartoonist Rick McKee of the Augusta Chronicle sends me this cartoon via Facebook.

BTW, he has a great book that includes a lot of climate cartoons skewering Gore and others: click the image

Phil, good article. It makes clear that the minuscule tail of global warming is not what’s wagging the gigantic dog of disaster debt. Instead, it’s the multiple payouts of federal relief to people who live and businesses which try to function in disaster prone areas. Where do states come in for blame in this? In my opinion, they are more culpable for endorsing and encouraging population growth in areas they could easily designate as off limits. The question is: what are the best, far-sighted solutions for New Orleans, New York, Houston, et al, which allow their continued functioning as vital shipping ports, oil hubs and centers of government – but without the regular spectacle of flooded homes, interrupted services, furloughed employees, etc. (?)

The comments attached to that article are good for a dose of hate and vitriol. Facts are met with venom.
People get vicious when their beliefs are challenged, regardless of how virtuous and caring they view themselves.

A friend who has been avoiding media for a week asked me about the Houston floods and the media last night. I answered. The media keeps nibbling around the edges looking for anything they can to blame Trump, but are struggling to find anything.

Don’t forget Trump’s hat. It said USA on it, never mind you can get USA hats anywhere, Trumps probably came from his campaign store, and therefore he is soliciting donations in Texas rather than helping Houston.

It doesn’t get weirder. Well it could, we will have to wait to find out from the press how “horrifying” Baron Trump’s latest T-shirt will be.

Indeed. In the US, it has always been and still is primarily the responsibility of state and local authorities to prepare for and respond to disasters of this sort. The disaster that was New Orleans was due overwhelmingly to the lack of preparation by the city (and no leadership by the mayor – he decamped for Houston), and that the then governor of LA waiting so long before inviting the feds in (because, for the non-US readers, the feds cannot just march in; they have to be asked by the state’s governor, first). These factors were aggravated by, in those days, FEMA’s being primarily a disaster preparedness organization/function, not so much a rescue-and-recovery organization/function.

FEMA’s own documentation says that it would take them about 3 days to be onsite after a disaster is declared. And after Katrina, it took them about 3 days to get on site.
It has always been the responsibility of state and local authorities to be first on the site for any disaster.
NO and LA failed their citizens miserably, and the media decided (once again) to blame Republicans for failing to clean up fast enough, problems caused by Democrats.

Another point – Blanco didn’t want to activate the Guard because it would cost him state money – that’s why he wanted Federal troops, but he wanted them under HIS control. Didn’t happen. Gov Abbott had activated the TNG even before Harvey hit.

There is an appalling report in the U.K. about an academic in the USA gloating that Houston/Texas has been hurt by the hurricane and deserved it because it voted Republican. I hope this is fake news as it must represent a new low in political immorality if true. Whatever views or opinions people hold there can only be empathy for Houston, Bangladesh and any other people or place suffering natural disasters. Nature is perhaps putting us in our place and those fortunate enough not to be in the front line should pray or wish well for those affected.

In addition, whoever said that was a MORON! The vote in a presidential election goes state by state. Hillary Clinton, though losing the state vote, won the Houston vote. I guess those in Houston “deserved ” to get hit because they voted for Hillary Clinton.

in re voting within a state being regional – a few years ago Gov. Gregoire was pushing a bill for raising Washington State gas taxes to fund highway improvements. She promised widening of Hwy. 101 in our area if it passed. It passed statewide, but not in our area (Olympic Peninsula). Oops – no monies for us.

It occurred to me some may think we had no right to any funds because we didn’t support the bill. Our thinking was that if they took our money we should get what was promised we would be paying for. It would be fair to exempt us from improvements in our area only if we were exempted from paying the extra tax.

I was one of those people under mandatory evacuation orders for Hurricane Rita. I spent 24 hours stranded on I-45 in the middle of Houston due to total grid lock. No one could get on or off the freeway, including emergency vehicles. Rita was a Cat 5 at the time and heading right for us. If it had hit then we would all have drowned and no one could have helped us. Fortunately, for us, the storm moved east and spared Houston. It took me 34 hours to get to Dallas where I have family, usually a 4-5 hour drive.

I will NEVER follow a mandatory evacuation order like that again. Houston’s freeways flood often, even after an isolated rain shower. Everyone in Houston knows that. Governor Abbot meant well, but in this case Mayor Turner gave better advice.

“Which is why you evacuate well before the storm arrives, not 6 hours before landfall. Waiting for “government” to say it is time to go? That is a mistake.”

So where exactly are you suggesting 6.5M people go, when the exact path the storm will take is not known in advance? Even 24 hours before landfall the exact landfall location is not known, winds can cause the storm path to vary by many miles. Also, many of those folks do not have relatives they can stay with, and many do not have the money to pay for hotels. FEMA will NOT make payments in advance. So your statement is rather illogical in all aspects.

Away. From. The. Storm. Or, how about the city of Houston open all the city owned buildings, along with all those privately owned ones, to its citizens who can not evac, get them above flood stage for the short period of time needed. Sitting on your ass and waiting for government to tell you what to do is not the most intelligent thing to do, which would explain why you do just that.

And for the record, over the years I have loaded up tools, supplies and equipment and went INTO the path of incoming hurricanes, left my warm house to go out into snow emergencies. Why? Because people CAN NOT depend on government to help them.

Once again, 2hotel is great on vague pronouncements, light on details. 6.5M people on the roads, at 3 per car that’s 2M cars. The capacity of I10 in one direction is 150,000 cars per day. So in 3 days you could evacuate around 1M people, 1/6th of the population. But some would go at the last minute, ensuring thousands of cars on the road and many deaths due to drowning. Gee, the number of deaths has been relatively low at 31 so far, and many of those were folks trapped in vehicles. So your argument that staying in their residences caused major problems is without foundation.

Sit your ass in the mud and wait for “government” to tell you what to do. That is the course of action you have chosen, and hopefully your slow, agonized death will be filmed so real human beings can learn from your stupidity.

Yeah, right. It makes so much sense to tell 6.5M people to get in their cars and go out on the roads. Roads which quickly became flooded and would have resulted in many thousands of people being stranded in their cars.

The GOP governor wasn’t urging a mandatory evacuation order,such as occurred before Rita, but rather urging people to consider disregarding local officials’ calls to stay put. This was well in advance of the storm’s arrival. If 25,000 or 50,000 people (presumably persons on the fence) had evacuated there’d have been less of a crisis in Houston. The number of people entering highways out of town could have been controlled to prevent the highway from getting overloaded and clogged.

Thanks, clipe… i get tired of all the katrina bashing every time these sort of posts come up. The superdome went well, the evacuation went great and people who stayed put did so by personal choice. People don’t realize that there is a mentality down here that says, “the government ain’t yer mama”. People who stayed took a personal risk. (a risk that in reality was reasonable given that people had no way of knowing that the drainage system design was flawed) These hurricanes are a work in progress for government officials. They learn from one storm to the next. Given that these storms don’t occur that often, they did a reasonably good job. People down here know that the government is not responsible for their welfare in these storms. (it’s called personal responsibility) That having been said, people were actually fairly well taken care of…

It is a real catastrophe for Trump. It is well known that he has no personality at all and that his decisions are based on public opinion polls – he is just trying to please all voters. It may even cost him any friendly coverage in WaPo or NYT. Or did I describe someone else?

It doesn’t sound like Trump to me. Methinks Trump has his own opinions on a lot of things. He doesn’t stick his finger up into the air to see how the wind is blowing like most politicians do. Thinking Trump is driven by public opinion polls is ridiculous. Which polls should Trump believe? The ones that oversample Democrats?

No, a real leader already has a direction in mind, and gently leads the people to their own realization that the direction he is pointing to is the right direction to take. That’s Trump.

“Self-Reliant” versus “Gimme-Handout” culture. One looks to themselves and their community first and foremost,.. the other looks for ‘Big-Daddy’ and someone to blame. Prayers and Best Hopes for Texans in their trials and tribulations.

The difference however, is that Texans, and Houstonians, tend to be more self-sufficient than the people in New Orleans.

It’s way politically incorrect, but I have noticed that the response of various countries to disasters varies wildly.

The champion at disaster recovery has to be Chile. link Be it a mine disaster or an earthquake they always seem to do the right thing. The booby prize goes to an unnamed country whose inhabitants sat around on piles of rubble waiting for foreign aid that couldn’t get through because of corruption and bureaucracy.

The problem is Bush’s response to Katrina was so far ABOVE effective the leftards made themselves look like f*cking idiots in the eyes of the millions upon millions of people who lived through Katrina. My mother lives in Pearl River county Mississippi and she can attest to the fact that US military helicopters(National Guard, Army Reserve, Navy, Navy Reserve, USAF, USAF Reserve and USCG) were operating before the sun even rose on 30 August. And that freight train in the sky operated for 28 days, without let up. I can verify that because I was THERE, I pulled into my mother’s front yard on September 5th and I did not leave until the first week of November. So all the politicians making hay out of ANY natural disaster can (SNIPPED)

I think you should substitute “snip” or a derivation for all those words you keep getting in trouble over. We would all still understand what you mean, and you could stay in the good graces of the mods. :)

Young people read this website. We should all keep that in mind when posting.

[The mods often, though not always, use “pruned” for that purpose …. Note: The residue from pruning is descriptive, like that from snipping – but implies a more “fragrant” fruitful fertilizer to the mind. .mod]

No matter how good Trump’s response is to this disaster, it will never be good enough for Democrats and their lapdog media. They will never let a crisis go to waste, so they’re already scheming on how to make political hay out of it.

Pure fiction worked in 2006, the only reason it might not work again is that a significant portion of the population has realized in the last year that the MSM pushes agenda over fact.

Some pertinent points about Katrina:
– The storm hit far stronger and did much more damage to Mississippi than Louisiana, but MS didn’t get nearly the same coverage, because the people actually heeded warnings to evacuate the coast, and neighborhoods with damage banded together to help each other.

-FEMA agreements with the States were that they could plan on Federal assistance not arriving for three days after a storm, FEMA had food, water and ice delivered with 24 hours.

-By the amount of material delivered in the first week, the response to Katrina was the largest and fastest ever conducted by FEMA (Some survivors of Camille reported it took six days just to see a plane fly overhead)

The part of the response that got botched was the trailers that were designated as temporary housing, but that occurred long after the narrative of a failed federal response was created.

Notice that the Foreword to the cartoon book is written by Pat Sajak, who is also on the Board of Regents at Hillsdale College and an eloquent spokesman for the college and for liberty and constitutional government.